BRIEF UPDATE ON TREVOR TREDAWAY!

Trevor Tredaway

"Hope everyone's 4th of July was spectacular! We have been in and out of town for the past few weeks, so I have not been able to upate. We do leave tomorrow to go to Memphis for the upcoming MRI. It can only be good. I previously mentioned the decrease in pain since starting the new supplements. Now, his hair has started coming back in. He never lost it all; it just got really thin and sparse. He is just good!I have a lot to update, but need to finish packing. There are a few new pictures. I will update as soon as we get the MRI results. Thanks for your prayers!"

Melinda

(Trevor's Mother)

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-TOKYO (Nikkei)-- The Nikkei Stock Average closed 0.34% lower at 9647.79 on Tuesday....

(The Associated Press)

Many of you have asked how Trevor's Fundraiser is coming along. I have not updated, because from a public relations standpoint, when there is little to report, the rule of thumb is to remain silent until there is a major development. Nevertheless, my Blog readers--all of you whom I love deserve some human explanation of what has been taking place "behind the scenes" in our quest to raise both public awareness and funds for Trevor and his battle with cancer. Here's how I would summarize where we've been and where we are today.

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Last November, I had an event partner who was employed with a national theme restaurant chain where international rock stars perform mini-concerts. I'll leave their name out of it. In my first strategic meeting, I managed to present a wonderful plan to her that involved a dinner concert, the need for a major rock artist who would donate their performance fee, a venue, staging, a sound and lighting system, I addressed insurance issues, strategic event personnel and a logistics plan for executing the event. For the benefit of those of you who don't reside here, Phoenix is considered a "very transient, luxury marketplace" according to a friend of mine who is a General Manager of a television station. With the economy not yet showing signs of the deep recession we are currently mired in, last November, my event partner who is a happily married mother of three looked me squarely in the eyes after my impassioned 10-minute presentation with flip charts and figures concluded and said "I want to do this. But we have to think bigger than a local artist or we'll never raise the funds Trevor needs. I'll need to secure approval from our corporate headquarters. But I so get this, and I'm on board!" As it turned out, my former event partner had a son facing open heart surgery in mid December, 2008 and she didn't need to be told about what parents go through to raise funds for children battling brain cancer. She knew all about lemonade stands, garage sales, homes being sold, neighborhood barbeque's and credit cards filled to their limits. Before we adjourned our meeting, I proposed a basic plan for all press releases to be jointly coordinated through her restaurant chain on their letterhead with our names as contacts. We had a local television reporter who was on board with us too and the restaurant venue would set up a professional stage with both a Klipsch public address system and terrific lighting. We had four major contacts to procure a musical artist, and we would meet again in mid January after the excitement of the Christmas Holiday Season had quieted down and her son recovered from surgery (which he did, Thank God). We were on a roll and our minds were in synch; we were definitely "on the same page". Then the unthinkable happened.

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We set up a meeting for mid-January. By then "Live Nation" and a contact we had at the L.A. Music Awards Show would be dialed-in. Barely a week out from our meeting, I received an e-mail that despite her setting a sales record that exceeded THREE HUNDRED PERCENT above her sales goal, she was laid off. Within 60 seconds I saw our entire project collapse. It took me two hours to absorb what had happened. I called her at home to see what I could do to network her as soon as possible into another job. We were both in shock. The layoff simply made no sense. The project was not continued by her former General Manager whom I spoke with two weeks later. He rambled on nervously about liability since so much money would be passing hands from the cafe to Trevor's special bank account. I told him that two suitable non-profit organizations would be available to satisfy all legal requirements of any funds raised and transferred to Trevor's special bank account (minus expenses for food and beverages). In years past, while in broadcast management, I always allowed an additional thirty-percent of my total vent budget for "Miscellaneous Items", in other words, last minute emergencies that were unforeseen and raised their ugly head. My phone conversation with the General Manager was a complete waste of time and the project was clearly at a stand still. It was time to start over.

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A good friend of mine who is a Vice Mayor of a nearby city and another friend of mine who handles Public Relations both offered to step in and help me after I explained the challenge of getting Trevor's fundraiser back on the table. We held several meetings and many more individually with retail store owners, Resort & Spa owners, an entrepreneur with a nine-piece power-rock group with a horn section on a retainer--you name it! I even met with Jim Lane, the Mayor of Scottsdale and spoke with three agents of major recording artists. By now it was May, 2009. We three communicated by e-mail, talked on the telephone, and worked old contacts.

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One businessman I reached out to said it all: "Michael, ordinarily I would ask you to stop by my office and I'd cut you a check to underwrite all of your costs for production. But my business is literally dying and I'm staring down a large black hole on a daily basis and struggling to find a way to keep all of my employees on the payroll. We're in the red, and you couldn't have picked a worse time in history to stage such an ambitious project. I'm so sorry. But I can't do it. Our numbers are down forty-six percent. It's shocking!", he said in an exasperated tone. To adapt, we revised our numbers to half of the original goal. Then we cut the numbers back again by a full third. One of our friends raised $20,000.00 for another worthy cause, but ended up $15,000.00 in the negative after expenses which he paid from his own pocket. We couldn't imagine such a nightmare!

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Next, I told the guys working with me to throw all ideas out on the table and that I didn't care who had the best idea; if a Wine Tasting event, or a dinner made more sense, I said, "Let's re-think what we can do. All options are on the table". Throughout this period, I stayed in touch with Melinda and continued to monitor what was happening with Trevor's health. His determination is a miracle and so are his current circumstances. But in Scottsdale, Arizona the strategic problem is an obvious one. Because Trevor resides in Texas, even in a strong economy, we are discovering that unilaterally across the country unless a child lives in your locale, you are "swimming upstream" in terms of marshaling financial and logistical resources to execute any event of any significant scale or scope. The unemployment rates here are staggering and the Travel and Leisure market in Phoenix is among the Top 5 hardest hit in the United States. In the Sunday Arizona Republic newspaper Business Section, I was stunned to see the pending foreclosure list of well known resorts--many that were under renovation throughout 2008. They are now in arrears on mortgages from the additional renovation debt from roughly $70 million to $95 million! So here's where we are this morning:

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The entire economic world has changed. Every market from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nikkei in Japan has been dealt severe body blows. Entire industry's from telecommunications, insurance and the automobile manufacturing sectors have been bailed out and subordinated to a nationalized status. Foreclosures and joblessness is rampant. My sources at a local business college who knew of my project for Trevor advised me to hold out for the Third Quarter of 2009. Within 60 days of that phone call, they revised their forecast to the Third Quarter of 2010 before we would see measurable progress of an economic recovery beginning to take place.

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Yesterday morning, I received a call from a newspaper reporter in Midland, Texas. I advised her that it was apparent to my team and I that Trevor's event would need to take place in Midland where he lives. Yes, Trevor was a part of the Scottsdale community for a short time, but he resides in a community where we now have to reach out to local resources in Texas with far more empathy and emotional connectedness to a 4 year-old little boy struggling with cancer than a "transient, luxury market" like Phoenix could provide. One of our team members cautioned that we should wait until January of 2010 to judge the strength of the economy for reasonableness. So, as of this morning, Trevor's fundraising project remains alive, albeit, as a scaled down, regional event. The message from the three of us here in Scottsdale (11 hours away by car) to Trevor in Midland, Texas is this: "We are not easily discouraged and we are not 'throwing in the towel'. We are in a state of re-assessing where people's hearts and minds are at such a terrible economic time.

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I asked the newspaper reporter to consider my ten-minute synopsis as a "call to action" for musicians and a venue in Midland to step forward to contact me. There is a wonderful concept that runs through my mind. It regards the night I saw Guy Clark, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in concert in 2007. They took the stage with no Set List and one-by-one we never knew as the audience what we about to hear! But it was fun. Times like the ones we are currently suffering through can humble a person. At this point, if three local musicians would join me with acoustic guitars for an "Up Close and Personal" concert that could possibly lead to a series of fun get-togethers for Trevor's community, that would clearly be a far cry from what Patty and I originally had in mind back in November, 2008. You see, back then we lived in a different world. I think we're just now coming to grips with that reality. But come hell or high water, this dream will not fade away. We refuse to allow that.

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We refuse to acknowledge defeat--only victory. And we will continue to step back and rest from time to time in order to remain clear headed and fresh with ideas. In the meantime, the most important person in all of this is Trevor. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers for safe travel back to Memphis for his MRI, for the news to be encouraging for his Mom and Dad and his little 2 year-old sister Morgan. And if you have enough room in your prayers, there are three of us here in Scottsdale who need to catch a break to make an emotional connection with people that is at once fun and unforgettable so we can raise funds for Trevor's ongoing medical treatments and honor all the laughter and joy he brings to everyone he meets. Or world needs Trevor's sweet laughter and goodness more than ever. That's the latest from here. We're "still in the game" and I wouldn't bet against us.

Michael

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Tomorrow I promise a shorter follow up on what we are experiencing here in the Phoenix economy. I'm certain it's not too different than your towns and cities. See you then!